by M. D. Cooper
Isa had fallen onto a gully that had filled to the top with ash. The ground around it was also treacherous. Her exo tried to right itself, but the edges of the hole were crumbling, and the other leg was sinking deeper. More ash gave away, and Isa sank deeper still, dragging her cabin window against the rocks.
Isa did as the engineer said, mentally cursing herself. None of this was helping Erin. She had to slow down and be careful, or she would end up dead, and then no one would search for her wife.
A few moments later, Isa felt the impact of metal pincers, and she instantly dropped lower. Her position was precarious. She hoped Lark didn’t end up in the hole with her.
Isa felt herself move again, upward this time; Lark was pulling her exo out. Hanging suspended in the cabin, there wasn’t anything Isa could do to help. She watched the wall of the chasm ease past. Then she was out.
Lark turned her upright and set her on her feet, looking at the dark, destroyed landscape again. Isa craned around and saw the other exo’s legs spread and its pincers extended on prehensile arms. As she watched, Lark released the pincers and retracted the long arms.
Isa started up her exo and set off again. On a private channel, she called out,
She wasn’t really expecting a reply, yet the lack of one made her sad and fearful.
In another few minutes, they had arrived at the rockfall that marked Erin’s last location. It struck Isa as a little odd that only this one pike of ejecta had landed in the vicinity.
Lark immediately got to work, extending her pincers and removing the smaller rocks. Isa operated her exo to do the same, quickly lifting the material and placing it to one side.
After a few minutes, they extracted Erin’s skiff. It was relatively undamaged, but empty. After examining it as carefully as possible, they turned their exos back to the pile.
Lark was thinking that Isa probably didn’t want to see what lay beneath the boulders. The woman thought she was on a mission to recover a body.
was all Isa could think to say.
It was true that she didn’t want to see Erin in that state. But unless she did see her, however she looked, Isa knew she would never be able to accept that Erin was gone.
They continued to work. One boulder was particularly heavy and they lifted it between them. All the while, Isa looked closely beneath each rock.
Finally, they were done. Only compressed, dented ground the color of ash remained in the space. Isa double-checked the coordinates Phaedra had sent. They were in the right spot, but Erin wasn’t there.
Isa probed the ground in the hollow with her pincers. The metal hands dug into the compacted earth, gouging deep ruts. There didn’t appear to be anything below the soil. Certainly nothing that resembled human remains.
The obvious answer to the question of what had happened to Erin had been eliminated. Isa began to explore other explanations for her wife’s disappearance.
She said,
Isa waited while Lark viewed her recording of the pile of boulders before they’d cleared it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 05.12.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near Mount Poros
REGION: Athens, New Canaan System
The cloud from the volcanic eruption was stretching ever higher and wider across the planet’s surface, but eventually, the skiff cleared the haze, flying into clear space with the dark skies above them.
“I wonder when the eruption will be over?” Isa asked. “Phaedra said she expected another large blast.”
“One of many, if you ask me.” Lark shot Isa a worried look.
“If we don’t get Athens’ stabilization on track, Poros could be active for hundreds of years.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. And what’s more, it won’t be the only massive eruption we’ll see if we don’t fix the PETER soon. The uninhabitable zone will spread, and the entire surface could be unfit for human life.”
Isa whistled. “I thought the evacuation was temporary. What you’re saying is, New Canaan could lose one of its habitable planets?”
“That’s right. I mean, the poles might remain livable, just about, but regular ejections of gas and dust into the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions are going to make global temperatures plummet. Those luxury resorts at Attica will be a thing of the past…. No one in their right minds will choose to live here.”
“I didn’t realize things were so bad. Erin said you’d gotten the place under control again.”
“That was what we thought. Everything seemed to be returning to normal. That was the trend, anyway, after the activity had been increasing for months. We really thought we’d fixed it, though it wasn’t clear how. Now I don’t know what the hell was happening, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to find out. Especially now that Erin’s gone.”
As Lark finished her sentence she choked up.
“Sorry.” She wiped her eye with the back of her hand. “I know you think she’s still alive. I really hope she is too.”
“It’s okay,” said Isa. “I know I must sound crazy in the circumstances. That’s what everyone seems to think. What will you and Fazir do?”
“Continue to live on the PETER. Bathe in hot springs a little less.”
“You live up there? I thought you lived on the planet.”
“No, we’ve always lived on the ring. Of course, if we can’t stabilize Athens, people could still live on a space station, if they wanted to stay.”
“Yeah, Erin would—” Love to build another space station. Isa bit her lip.
“What do you think has happened to her?” Lark asked.
“I was hoping you might be able to help answer that. You were one of the last people to see her.”
“I know, but I’ve told you. I was too distracted by Fazir’s injury, and Erin ran to her own skiff. It wasn’t until later I realized she was missing. Then I checked with Phaedra and heard the bad news.”
“What happened before that? Anything unusual?”
Lark’s eyes flicked up and to the side. “Uh, we were saying goodbye to the engineers from the Transcend, thinking their work was done. Thanking them for their help. You know, that kind of thing. Erin was doing her polite diplom
at routine—”
“Erin? A polite diplomat?”
Isa recalled Erin’s table manners after she’d been shipside for a while. She remembered Martin and Erin’s huge argument after the invasion drill on Troy. She recalled her wife’s spectacular leap from two stories high during the drill, when the skirt of her dress had flown up over her head.
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”
“Yes,” Lark replied, giving Isa a sad smile. “She did a great job at keeping the tensions between the two groups from building up. Hal and Jere really liked her, I think. Reiko and Leif weren’t so warm, but Jere was inviting her to pay a visit to Admiral Iysra’s flagship when Fazir noticed the plume from the volcano. He was the first to see it.”
“They were inviting her to go with them right then?”
“I think so. Or visit later. I can’t remember.”
“Why do you think they were doing that?”
“In the spirit of friendship between New Canaan and the Transcend, probably. The Transcend didn’t have to help us, after all. What do they care if we lose one of the planets for a century or two? New Canaan is a prize system. They didn’t want us to have it, from what I understand.”
“You sound like you like them.”
Lark blushed a little. “I don’t dislike them. Don’t forget, Sera Tomlinson gave us the tech that saved us at Bollam’s World. She’s from the Transcend, too.”
Isa knew that, but she also knew that, for all intents and purposes, Admiral Iysra and her fleet were just waiting for the orders to swoop in and seize everything New Canaan had to offer. Cozying up to them didn’t sound right to her, or like something that Erin would do.
“What about those two who went to another section of the PETER?” she asked. “What did you say their names were? You said they didn’t seem to like Erin so much.”
“I don’t think I mentioned their names in that context. Reiko and Leif. They seemed okay. Maybe it was only that they were a bit quieter than Jere and Hal. Reiko complained after they arrived, but she settled down in the end.”
Isa mulled over Lark’s words. Her instinct that Erin was alive came from her gut and had no origin in logic or reason. But the more she considered the situation as Lark had laid it out, the more she could see a story unfolding. A story that ended in Erin’s ‘death’.
The Transcend had everything to gain from having someone of Erin’s rank and inside knowledge in their grasp, but to snatch her in broad daylight would be a political disaster. It would be tantamount to a declaration of war on the system, and the Transcend’s fleet that lurked beyond New Canaan’s heliopause would be the first to be attacked, making it difficult to get Erin outsystem.
If the Transcend’s engineers had been sent in to extract sensitive information from a New Canaanite, they would have to fake that person’s death. A volcanic eruption would be the perfect cover. But if that was what had happened, Isa would have to move carefully to find Erin; if the kidnappers knew she was on their tail, they might be prompted to destroy the evidence of what they’d done.
Lark guided the skiff into the landing bay at the PETER. As they exited the vessel, Isa thanked the woman for her help.
“No problem. I’m sorry we didn’t find her. What do you plan on doing now? Are you going to get a berth on one of the ships heading for Carthage?”
“I was hoping I might be able to stay here.”
“You were?” Lark’s eyebrows rose. She’d clearly already dismissed Isa’s speculations, but decorum overcame her skepticism of Isa’s theories. “Sure, there’s plenty of room. We can find you a bunk somewhere. You’ll have plenty of time to catch one of the ships, if you change your mind and decide to evacuate.”
“Er, I wasn’t intending to leave. I want to keep searching for Erin, as long as it takes.”
“You do?”
Isa hated that she sounded like a crazy, grief-stricken widow. She couldn’t help that, but she needed Lark’s agreement if she was to remain on the PETER. She could work on persuading the engineer on her new idea later.
“Well, if you want to stay here for a while,” Lark continued, “that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Great.”
“Come on. I’ll introduce you to Reiko and Leif, if they’re back.”
“A vid just arrived for me. Do you mind if I watch it before I follow you in?”
“Sure.”
Lark left the bay, and Isa opened the message from Martin. It was a vid of himself and Jude aboard the Odyssey. Jude was sitting on Martin’s lap.
“Say hi to Mommy Isa,” Martin said.
“Hi, Mommy Isa! Hi, Mommy Erin!” The little boy waved his hand.
Behind his son, Martin’s face twisted in pain. “Do you want to tell her what you’ve been doing on the ship?”
As Jude explained how he’d made a friend and they had been playing hide-and-go-seek in the observation dome, Martin’s voice overlaid Jude’s.
Jude’s voice took over, continuing his excited chatter about his new friend. Isa watched her son’s image hungrily, remembering the soft, heavy feel of him sitting in her lap and the weight of him on her hip when he was younger. She recalled the little bronzed boy toddling after his father into the waves at their beach house on the Med, and running through the long grass next to the Black Sea on Troy.
For a moment, her resolve faltered. Was she imagining all this stuff about Erin? Had the news of her wife’s death affected her mental health? She’d required treatment to come to terms with the deaths of everyone she had left behind at Victoria…. Was she becoming mentally unstable again?
Guilt nagged at her. If something happened to her, Martin would be forced to cope with two deaths, while raising four children, and Jude would be devastated by the loss of two of his parents. Was she being selfish in refusing to accept the obvious truth about what had happened to Erin?
Then she remembered the boulders.
The rocks could not have fallen in that pattern. And if Erin did die there, what happened to her body? Even if it burned, there should be some kind of a trace.
Those two facts couldn’t be denied. Lark had not been able to explain them. Isa knew she was right. Her instinct wasn’t leading her astray, the evidence had confirmed it.
She walked along the passageway to the living area of the PETER. She would reply to Martin later and tell him what she’d found; she would record a message for Jude too. She was so glad they were safe and traveling home to Carthage.
Two people she hadn’t met before sat in the lounge along with Lark and Hal. The four had been discussing something as she entered, but she’d been too preoccupied by her own thoughts to notice what they’d been saying.
From their expressions, it was clear they’d been talking about her.
“Isa,” said Lark, too brightly. “Meet Reiko and Leif.”
Reiko was an angular woman with a gaunt face and black hair cut in a short, severe bob. Leif had deep-set, grey eyes above a thick beard. Unlike Hal and Jere, they were both wearing TSF uniforms.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said Reiko.
Isa looked into the woman’s black eyes. “Thanks for your condolences.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 05.12.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Mount Poros
REGION: Athens, New Canaan System
Erin had to fly several passes over the forest’s thick foliage to find a space large enough to land her skiff. The tree cover was dense in the foothills surrounding Mount
Poros’s looming peak. By the time she reached the rest of the team, everyone was waiting for her. They had already taken up the seismometers and dispatched them on drones for storage aboard the orbital ring.
Erin walked up to the group feeling a little sad to be saying goodbye to Fazir and Lark, even though they were somewhat crazy—especially Fazir. But she guessed she would see them again at some point.
She would not miss the other engineers. Jere and Hal were okay, but Leif and Reiko had definitely been a thorn in her side the entire duration of the assignment. It would be a pleasure to see them go, and have the weight of maintaining secrecy about New Canaan’s defenses off her shoulders.
“Erin,” said Reiko, “I was worried you weren’t going to make it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Leif said. “We would have waited for her. We aren’t in a rush.”
“Yeah, no hurry to go back to another tour on a cruiser,” said Jere. “I want to thank you for the hospitality you’ve shown us. We’re well aware of the political tensions between New Canaan and the Transcend, and we’re grateful you could overlook all that and treat us as individuals who were sent here only to help.”
“No problem,” Erin said. “On behalf of New Canaan, I’d like to thank you all for being gracious guests.” Was that the right thing to say?
She guessed so. Diplomacy wasn’t so far from lying through your teeth.
There was a pause where everyone looked uncomfortable, having exhausted the average engineer’s supply of small talk. Jere was looking glum, and Lark looked like she might burst into tears at any moment.
Erin pitied them. It had to be hard to care about someone who lived on the other side of an unbreachable divide.
“Looks like this is it,” said Fazir, clapping his hands and rubbing them together.
“Er, I have an idea,” Jere blurted.
All present turned to him in surprise, the TSF’s engineers equally as taken aback as the New Canaanites.
“It would be a shame not to build on the rapport we’ve generated,” he continued. “You guys should pay us a visit in return sometime. Nothing formal, just—”